You need a certain amount of confidence to do anything that involves some risk, like speaking in public, starting a business, righting a wrong, or standing up for yourself or for others. Why will your book, or blog, or podcast, or request for a raise, succeed? You need to have confidence that what you are doing is worthwhile.

Often, perhaps too often, lacking confidence in our ideas or our talents prevents us from taking risks, and while that might keep us from failing it also keeps us from stretching and doing something worthwhile.

We all do things that we know are bad for us, for our individual selves or for our society or for our environment. And yet for one reason or another, for pleasure or convenience, for personal ease or peer pressure, we do them anyway.

The saying goes, “I would have rather have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.” Is this true? Doesn’t some failure have far too lasting and unwanted consequences? Still, we would learn or experience very little if we stuck to doing what’s already comfortable to us. And, trying new things we might fail at for awhile can be enriching and exciting.

So, when is it useful to fail? What level of failure do you find acceptable? What are your limits?